


Risk & Reward

by rosecake



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Recovery, Rescue Missions, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-02 12:19:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18810775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecake/pseuds/rosecake
Summary: Galen Erso asked Bodhi to deliver a message. He also told him not to come back.(AU where Jyn never left the Partisans.)





	Risk & Reward

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smaragdbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smaragdbird/gifts).



The Partisans left Bodhi in a cell with the hood still covering his head. His hands were bound behind him, the cuffs fixed to the wall with some kind of metal ring, and after a few minutes of grasping around with his fingers Bodhi gave up on getting the bindings undone. Trying to shake the hood off turned out to be a waste of time as well. He could hear people talking in the distance, along with the familiar rattling of equipment that came with any workspace, but nobody came to the cell door no matter how loudly he yelled for their attention. After a while his throat went hoarse, and then he gave up on that, too.

There was nothing for him to do but wait until the Partisans decided to release him. Or at least speak with him.

Anger curled his stomach, and Bodhi yanked at his bindings in frustration. There was no give in them, and all he managed to do was scrape the metal along the already tender sores around his wrists. He hissed at the new flush of pain, and tried to swallow the urge to start yelling for his guards again. He’d thought the hard part would be slipping away from the Empire, but he’d been wrong. He’d already been scheduled for leave time while they reloaded his shuttle, so they might not have even noticed he was gone yet.

Still, his elation at smuggling Galen’s message out unnoticed had been swiftly crushed by the realization that nobody in the Partisans seemed inclined to pay much attention to it. They’d taken the holochip from him, along with everything he’d had in his pockets, and then they’d dumped him in a corner and proceeded to ignore the fact that he existed.

Bodhi inhaled deeply and then exhaled to try and calm himself down, just like he’d been taught ever since he was a kid, but it didn’t help much. His heart was pounding and no weak attempt at meditation was going to rein it in.

Galen had said that Saw was a good man, had said that the rebels were good people, despite what the Empire said they’d done. Despite some of things Bodhi had seen them do himself. They’d been friends, that’s what Galen had said. Then again, Galen had also said he’d been friends with the Director once, a long time ago, and that didn’t exactly inspire confidence. He’d also called Bodhi brave, and while Bodhi had appreciated it, well, that didn’t make it true.

It was starting to dawn on Bodhi that, whatever his intentions, maybe Galen wasn’t the best judge of character.

He was chained to a wall, though, so there wasn’t much Bodhi could do about it besides wait for the inevitable. He was left waiting for what felt like a lifetime, but eventually they came for him. 

——

They forced him to his knees, still cuffed, and then finally took the hood off. Bodhi blinked as his eyes adjusted to the low light in the room, and he recognized Saw Gerrera standing in front of him immediately. The man’s face was all over the city, plastered on wanted notices and popping up nearly every day on the news feeds, but the holos they used were clearly out of date. He looked worse now, his face harsh and cold, and even though Bodhi had come all this way specifically to speak with him he still wanted to shrink away.

Still, he’d come for a reason. Galen wouldn’t have sent him if it weren’t important.

“You saw the holo, right?” asked Bodhi. They’d taken it from him, he assumed they must have watched it at some point. “You saw what-“

“Quiet,” bellowed Saw, his loud voice booming in the hollowed out cave, and Bodhi’s jaw snapped shut as he flinched.

There was a young woman standing beside Saw, so overwhelmed by his presence that Bodhi didn’t even notice her until she stepped forward, putting herself between the two of them. She held up Galen’s holochip as Saw directed the rest of the Partisans to leave the room.

“You got this from Galen Erso?” asked the woman, her eyes shining in the dim light of the cave. “I mean he gave it to you directly, in person?”

“Yes. He told me to bring it to Saw Gerrera,” said Bodhi. He avoided looking at Gerrera, preferring to keep his eyes on the woman instead. She was the first person who looked even halfway interested in believing him. “He said it was important.”

“Did you see the message yourself?” she asked. She stepped forward again, and now she was too close, and staring at him a little too intently. “Do you know what it says?”

Bodhi looked down to avoid her gaze. “No,” he said, and it felt strange to admit it now. He should have at least asked what it was about, shouldn’t he? “I didn’t have to, he said it was important, so it must have been-“

“Useless,” said Saw, and Bodhi bristled.

“I could have been killed bringing this to you!” said Bodhi. He would have risen to his feet if he’d been able to catch his balance, but instead he just ended up rising up enough to bruise his knees against the floor when he fell down again.

For a moment Gerrera looked as if he was going to smash Bodhi’s head in against the floor, but the woman placed herself in between the two of them, raising her hand in Saw’s direction as a placating gesture. Bodhi was surprised when it seemed to work.

“Why bring it, then?” she asked. “If you didn’t even know what was on it, why risk it?”

“Galen said it was important,” he said, and he realized then that he wasn’t going to be able to describe his motivations in a way that was going to make sense to them. The whole situation barely made any sense too Bodhi. “He said it was the right thing to do.”

“And you believed him? Just like that?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” she asked.

Bodhi hesitated, unsure of how to answer.

He believed Galen because he loved him. In the end it it was as simple as that. He’d seen firsthand how kind Galen could be, how warm, and he believed with every fibre of his being that he didn’t just love Galen, that Galen also loved him back.

And he’d seen how poorly Galen fit into the Imperial hierarchy. He’d listened when Galen had talked about his family, had understood how deeply that pain affected him even after so many years. And even though Galen hadn’t said as much, Bodhi had still been able to read between the lines, to understand that he blamed the Empire for what had happened. So he hadn’t been that surprised when Galen had asked him to commit treason. And he hadn’t watched the message himself, or even asked about it, because it really didn’t matter what it said. He believed Galen when he said that it was important, that it was the right thing to do, but honestly at that point he would have done whatever Galen had asked regardless. Because he loved him.

He wasn’t going to tell the Partisans that, though. He knew it would make him sound like a lovesick idiot, or worse, like an easy mark.

“He’s my friend,” said Bodhi. That was true, even it was the entire truth. “I trust him.”

The room was silent for a moment after he spoke. Eventually, the woman turned away from him to face Saw.

“He’s a liar,” said Saw.

Bodhi wasn’t sure if Saw was talking about him or Galen, but it didn’t matter. Neither of them were liars. “I’m not lying!” he said, and he looked towards the woman, but she had stepped back and wouldn’t turn around to look at him. “I don’t know what the message said, but whatever it was, Galen meant it. He’s telling the truth. _I’m_ telling the truth!”

“Take him back to his cell,” said Saw.

——

They put him back in a cell, but at least this time they unbound his hands and didn’t bother to put the hood back on. He’d been tied for so long it had strained his arms and made his hand numbs, and he sat and tried to rub feeling back into them as he waited for Saw Gerrera to decide his fate. With no chrono of any kind he wasn’t sure how long they left him there, but it seemed like ages before the woman turned up.

“Galen is still on Eadu, right?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Bodhi. “I mean, probably. He was there when I left. He hardly ever leaves the Eadu facility, not unless the Director wants him to oversee an installation somewhere in person, but he’s never gone long. If they found out that he betrayed the Empire, though…”

He stopped talking. He didn’t want to think about what was going to happen to Galen once the Director found out he’d tried to sabotage the project. It was probably inevitable once they realized Bodhi had gone AWOL, so maybe he _should_ be thinking about it, but he couldn’t wrap his mind around something that awful happening. Not to Galen.

“Did he say what was going to happen to him?” she asked.

Her face was calm, and when she spoke her tone was even and unbothered, but Bodhi knew a bluff when he saw one.

She was resting against the bars, her hands clasped in front of her on Bodhi’s side of the cell, and he didn’t think she would get that close in if she thought he was a threat. But he didn’t know if that was because she trusted him or because she didn’t find him particularly intimidating. There was something familiar about her, but Bodhi couldn’t quite place it. Maybe he’d seen her around Jedha. Maybe her face had been on a wanted poster he’d glanced over.

“No,” said Bodhi. Galen hadn’t really needed to say anything. The Empire didn’t forgive, and Bodhi’s imagination was already filling in all the gory details for him, even though he was doing his best not to think about it. “He just said I couldn’t come back once I left.”

“You really don’t have any idea what he said in the message?”

“No,” said Bodhi, slightly flustered that they kept bringing that up. “I mean, I figured it must have something to do with the project.”

“Do you even know what the project is? What they’re building?”

Bodhi shrugged. “They’re working on building some kind of weapon out of kyber.” Nobody had ever told him as much, nobody on Jedha or Eadu ever got more specific than calling it “the project”, but it was pretty obvious once you looked at what they were doing. The Empire wasn’t going to spend that much time and money strip-mining cyber for anything other than a weapon.

“Do you know what kind of weapon?”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know. I’m just a freight pilot.”

She was looking at him intently, and Bodhi got the impression that she knew a lot more about the project than he did. She was just feeling him out, trying to decide whether to trust him or not. Whether to trust the message he’d brought.  
“Whatever he said, I know it’s true,” said Bodhi. “Galen’s not a liar.”

She pulled away from the bars, and for a second Bodhi thought she was leaving, but when he came up to the door she was still there, leaning against the rock wall to the side of the bars, her scarf obscuring her face.

“Do you think he’s still alive?”

“Yes,” said Bodhi, with a confidence completely ungrounded in reality. Galen was still alive because he couldn’t bring himself to contemplate the alternative, no matter how final that last meeting had felt. “How long has it been since I was brought here?”

“A little over six hours.”

It had felt like a hell of a lot longer than six hours to Bodhi, but he was still glad to hear it. He’d had ten hours before he was due to report back, so with any luck nobody at the docks would have noticed anything off. And if they had no reason to be suspicious of Bodhi yet that meant they also had no reason to suspect Galen of anything.

“Then he’s still there,” said Bodhi, his fingers curling against the bars.

He’d been so sure it was the last time he was going to see Galen when he left, but she was asking questions like the rebels wanted more than just a message, like they wanted Galen himself. He could feel hope building inside him, unwanted. He didn’t want to jinx it.

She turned to look at him then, her gaze piercing, like she was trying to see straight through his body and into his heart. Trying to decide if she should really believe him, maybe, and for a wild second she reminded of Galen, and the way he’d looked at Bodhi before he’d asked him to betray the Empire.

“Would you-” she said, and her voice caught, her face twisting with emotion before she spoke again. “Would you be willing to go back to Eadu? To rescue him?”

It clicked for him then. Why she seemed so familiar, why she seemed to care more about Galen himself than the message he’d sent. She was the right age, the right general description, and she didn’t really look that much like Galen but he’d said she took more after her mother, hadn’t he? And she was still enough like him that Bodhi’d mind had been able to make the connection.  
“You’re her, aren’t you?” he asked, and then realized that was too vague. “You’re Jyn.”  
“Quiet,” she said, softly, raising a finger to her lips. “That’s a secret. I’ve been Kestral Dawn for years now. And you didn’t answer my question.”

“Yes,” said Bodhi. “Yes, I’ll go.”

——

He gave Jyn the ID code for his shuttle and she seemed confident she could get herself on it, so he walked back into the docks alone, as calmly as he could manage.

And he was only just barely managing. As hard as it had been to leave Eadu, to go looking for Saw, waltzing back to his shuttle like nothing had happened was worse. His stomach felt like it was trying to climb out his throat, and his heart rate was so high he was half convinced the guards could hear it as he flashed his identification.

The supervising officer scowled at him, hand resting his baton, and Bodhi nearly had a stroke. “You’re late,” he snapped.

He wasn’t late, he and Jyn had moved at lightning speed to get back to the loading bays and he’d actually managed to get in slightly early, but his nerves were already too frayed for him to argue with an officer. He stammered out an apology, pulling down on his sleeves and hoping the cuffs of his jumpsuit hid the lacerations the cuffs had left behind.

The officer rolled his eyes and stalked away, probably to find someone else to yell at until his shift was over, but Bodhi was still shaking by the time he got to his shuttle.

He nearly had a stroke again when Jyn was there, waiting for him.

The strain must have shown on his face. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” said Bodhi, his voice strained, and he leaned forward to rest his head on the dash. “I just need a second.”

He counted to three before he sat up and started going through take-off prep. Jyn sat down a crate just behind him, silent as he worked. She stayed silent until they’d left atmosphere and he let the auto-pilot kick on.

“Here,” she said. “I know you got scrapped up when they brought you in.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“I’m just glad they didn’t do anything worse. It gets harder and harder to talk him out of the Bor Gullet every day.”

Bodhi almost asked what a Bor Gullet was before deciding he was happier not knowing. The medkit had bandages in it, and he wrapped them around his wrists, happy he’d have something to stop the cuffs of his jumpsuit from rubbing against the marks. They might stand out, but they’d probably have bigger problems once they got to Eadu anyway.

“I’m sorry it’s just you and me,” said Jyn. “Everyone else is busy.”

“You convinced them to act on the message Galen sent?”  
Jyn nodded. “Saw will take care of it. He might even be able to get the Alliance to help.” She had equipment spread out across a crate in front of her, and she was going over it, checking the pieces. Bodhi focused on bandaging up his scrapes and tried not to feel too useless.

“Do you think this is going to work?” he asked.

She looked up from her equipment and shrugged, which wasn’t nearly as confident a response as Bodhi had been hoping for. “I have to try,” she said. “I don’t think I can…”

She stopped, and she wasn’t looking at Bodhi anymore, she was looking past him and past the windows into space. “I’ve got to at least try,” she said. “You’ve done enough, though. More than enough, really. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

Bodhi didn’t want to go back to Eadu. Really, what he wanted to do was hole up somewhere safe and commutable while he waited for Galen to catch up with him, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen. It was either go back to Eadu and risk getting caught, or live with the fact that he wasn’t going to see Galen again.

And he didn’t think that was something he could live with, so really, he didn’t have much choice at all.

“I’m going with you,” he said. His hands were shaking again, and he tried to ignore it. “I’m not leaving him behind.”

——

“You can stay with the ship,” said Jyn.

Bodhi had called over a trooper to sign off on his manifest, and that trooper was currently lying in an a heap in the corner of the shuttle while Jyn slipped into his armor. It was clearly too large and didn’t fit her right, but she’d managed to tighten it so that it wasn’t falling off, and hopefully nobody would be looking at them too closely to realize it was hanging off her frame wrong. “You don’t know the layout like I do,” he said. “This is more likely to work if I go with you.”

“Okay.” She slipped on the helmet, and the next time she spoke it distorted her voice. “I’m ready when you are, then.”

Bodhi wasn’t ready, but he didn’t think he ever would be, so stepped off the shuttle anyway. The landing deck was full of people - other cargo pilots, officers, lab techs in their white coveralls, a few stormtroopers looking around periodically. Nobody spared him a second glance. He headed toward the service entrance, and he could hear the thump of Jyn’s boots as she followed a few paces behind.

The walk from the service entrance to Galen’s quarters took about five minutes. They were drenched from having been outside, but that wasn’t unusual inside the Eadu facility, and it didn’t make them stand out. Nobody stopped them, nobody even seemed to notice them, but his hands were still shaking wildly by the time he reached up to ring the bell. He gave Galen all of five seconds to respond and then went ahead and punched in the entry code. The hallways was too exposed, too open.

The door slid shut behind them once they stepped inside, and Bodhi exhaled in relief. The walk down had been the worst five minutes of his life. He was cold and soaking wet from having been outside but there was something reassuring about being in Galen’s rooms, even if Galen didn’t appear to be in them at the moment.

Bodhi always felt safe here, even if he really wasn’t. “Galen?” he called. Galen’s quarters were a two-room suite, with a small living area and a separate bedroom and fresher. He wasn’t in the living room, and he wasn’t in the bedroom either when Bodhi checked.

“He gave you his entry code?” asked Jyn, her voice mechanical through the helmet.

“Yeah,” said Bodhi, and he was relieved when Jyn didn’t say anything else about.

She pried her helmet off and cradled it in her arm as she followed Bodhi.

Her eyes swept across the room, taking everything in, even though there really wasn’t much there. Galen didn’t keep much around in the way of personal items. Whether by choice or because of his circumstances, Bodhi wasn’t quite sure.

Jyn looked dazed. “He lived here?” “Yes,” said Bodhi. “I mean, he still does, technically.”

The sheets were a mess, but they always were. Everything else was in order. If he’d already been caught, surely the ISB would have been in already and turned everything upside down looking for evidence. So that had to be a good sign.

“We’re getting water all over his floors,” said Jyn, and that hardly mattered at this point, but she seemed a little in shock. That wasn’t good. Bodhi was relying on her to be the grounded one.

“I don’t think he’ll care,” he said, but she still looked strangely upset by it. “Everyone gets soaked in the rain. It’s all designed to dry fast.”  
She nodded and moved back into the living room. “There’s nothing personal here,” she said, running her hand along a table.

“No,” said Bodhi. “The Empire frowns on that kind of thing.”

She shook her head, and when she looked back at him she seemed sharp. “Where would he be?”

Bodhi looked over at the chrono on Galen’s wall. “The labs, probably. Maybe the cafeteria? It’s hard to tell, he doesn’t eat regularly,” said Bodhi. “We could wait for him here,” he suggested, but Jyn was shaking her head and he knew it was a bad idea even as he said it. They didn’t have time to wait around.

“Once the assault on Scarif launches they’ll know something is wrong,” said Jyn. “We need to be gone long before then.”

“Right, okay,” said Bodhi. He didn’t like the thought of going back out into the facility, but there wasn’t any getting around it. “I don’t have access to the labs, but the troopers check in regularly. You can check there, and I’ll scope out the common areas.” He hesitated for a moment, because it had been a while since she’d seen him. Over a decade. “You will recognize him, right?”

“Yes,” she said, staring at him. Maybe it had been a stupid question.

——

Bodhi regretted splitting up almost immediately. He felt exposed. He had Jyn’s blaster tucked into his jumpsuit, since she’d taken the stormtrooper’s, but if push came to shove he didn’t think he was going to be able to accomplish much with it. He checked the cafeteria, then the landing bays, then the observation decks. The weather never really changed, but the rain could be pleasant in its own way. At the very least it was more interesting to look at then the bare gray walls of the interior parts of the facility.

He was just leaving when the alarms went off.

“Damn it,” he muttered, fumbling with his comm as panic left his hands nearly unusable. He managed to ping Jyn, but there was no response. “Come on, come on-“ he whispered to himself, acutely aware that he was acting insanely suspicious and too panicked to act any calmer.

The trooper that snuck on him was quiet enough that Bodhi never heard him coming, and he was unconscious before he had a chance to register what was happening.

——

Bodhi woke up screaming, several volts in his side brutally raising him up from a deep and unfeeling sleep. He was on the floor, handcuffed for the second time that day, and when he looked up it was the last person he wanted to see.

“Ensign Rook,” said Director Krennic, derision in his voice.

Bodhi had no reason to believe the Director had known his name when he woke up that morning, and he wasn’t happy that the he knew it now. He kept his head down on Eadu at all times to avoid drawing attention to himself. Sometime he let his temper get the better of him on Jedha, but Jedha was safer. Orson Krennic hadn’t set foot on the moon in years.

“Sir,” he said, trying to sound as deferential as possible in the dim hope that it might help.

A trooper kicked him, and Bodhi groaned.

“You don’t speak unless I tell you to,” said Krennic.

There was an ugly tone to his voice that sent fear up Bodhi’s spine. Bodhi was afraid of him at the best of times - the Director’s temper was legendary, and Bodhi knew full well that the kyber he carried was valued a lot higher than any of the cargo pilots who ferried it from Jedha to Eadu. Generally, the Empire had at least token procedures officers had to follow before summarily executing their own people, but as far as he was aware Krennic didn’t pay them any mind.

He was tempted to beg, but he kept his mouth shut. It would only get him kicked again.

“Who’s this?” asked Krennic, holding up a holo of Bodhi and Jyn in Galen’s bedroom. Jyn had looked around the room, and he’d frozen it on a frame where she was looking directly at the camera.

Bodhi’s heart lurched, leaving him speechless. He’d known, in an objective way, that the Empire didn’t believe in privacy, but still. How long had there been cameras there? Not just on the door, that he could understand, but in the bedroom?

When he didn’t answer the trooper shocked him again, the end of the baton hitting him squarely in the stomach, and Bodhi’s voice was shaking as he tried to answer. He couldn’t remember the alias Jyn had given him earlier, so he made one up. “Cami Relasheen,” he said, a mangled version of the name of one of his cousins, and he hoped they wouldn’t manage to make that connection.

“And what is she doing inside my facility?” Asked Krennic. His voice was tight, barely contained rage in every syllable, and Bodhi’s mind went blank.

“I don’t know,” he said, and he knew it was a stupid response but he was too shaken to come up with anything better. It got him shocked again, just like he’d expected, and his whole body tensed against the electric surge in a way that just made it worse.

“Try again,” said the Director. “She’s a Partisan,” said Bodhi, tripping over the words. Krennic already knew she wasn’t supposed to be there, obviously. He wasn’t telling them anything they couldn’t figure out on their own, and hopefully it might stop the trooper from shocking him again.

No such luck. Bodhi screamed as the trooper struck him in the arm. No taser this time, no electric shock, just a hard enough strike with the baton that Bodhi felt something give in his shoulder.

“Wonderful,” said the Director, watching intently as Bodhi writhed, pain making his body arc forward unnaturally. “And why exactly did you bring her here?”  
Bodhi’s mind reeled. He was dead either way at this point, but if could avoid making things worse maybe it would go quickly. “I was broke,” he said, gasping. Money seemed like a better excuse than the truth. “She said she could-“

“Sir,” said a Death Trooper, and for a second Bodhi thought he was going to murdered, too, for interrupting.

Krennic stepped over him, and there was a short conversation. Bodhi couldn’t make out anything but the Director harsh, angry tone. He didn’t know if it was about Jyn, or Galen, or Scarif, but it was for at least a brief respite from being shocked or beaten. By the he turned back around to the trooper over Bodhi, Krennic was grounding out commands between clenched teeth.

“Don’t kill him until I’m back,” said Krennic. “But keep him hurting in the meantime.”

——

Bodhi woke with a jolt as someone touched his face. He would have struck them, but his hands were tied together and all he managed to do was jerk violently against his bonds.

“Bodhi,” said Galen, his voice low and worried, and for a moment Bodhi couldn’t figure out if he was dead, or if he was hallucinating, or if this was some kind of mind game they were playing on him.

Galen ran a hand along his face, cradling it, and it occurred to Bodhi that this was real. He tried to answer, but his voice cracked.  
“Jyn, can you get him free?” asked Galen.

He pulled Bodhi up into a sitting position and then leaned him forward, so that Bodhi was resting against his shoulder. He heard Jyn slip down behind him, felt as she pulled his hands up. Bodhi inhaled sharply as the movement jarred his arm, and Galen put his hand on Bodhi’s back, holding him as Jyn pried into the lock mechanism. He heard a something that sounded like an explosion in the distance, and the lights flickered briefly.

“You’re okay,” said Galen, soothingly, and Bodhi leaned into him.

There was a loud click, and suddenly his hands were free. If Galen hadn’t been holding him he would have slumped to the ground. At that moment, he wanted nothing more than to lapse into unconsciousness, but Galen was holding him, trying to get his attention.

“Can you walk?” asked Galen, urgency in his voice. Bodhi knew they needed to leave, quickly, but every movement felt slow and difficult, like the gravity was set far too high. “Bodhi?”

It took him a few tries before he could speak. “I think so,” he managed, leaning on Galen for support as he tried to stand.  
“Just carry him,” said Jyn. “We need to move.”

At some point she’d given herself a promotion, because she’d swapped out the stormtrooper armor for an officer’s uniform. The cap was pulled down low enough that the rim covered most of her face. She was already at the door, her gun up as she swept the hall for the enemy.

“I can walk,” said Bodhi, struggling to his feet.

Jyn turned her head, looking him up and down quickly before turning her face back to the hall. “Carry him,” she said. “It’ll be faster.”

“I’ve got you,” said Galen, sliding his arm around Bodhi’s torso. He half carried, half dragged him after Jyn, trying to keep pace with her as she made her way down the halls. He called out directions to a her a few times, and Bodhi realized they were heading for the platforms.

He heard rumbling, and then the whole hall shuddered violently. Galen stumbled, almost dropping Bodhi before he managed to catch himself.

“What’s happening?” asked Bodhi. The storms could sometimes batter the outer part of the installation, but he’d never felt it like this.

“The rebels are attacking,” said Galen.

It explained why there weren’t many guards inside trying to stop them. Still, Bodhi wished they’d waited until they were out before they’d started. Hadn’t Jyn said they were all going to Scarif?

They made it to the platform, and by that point Bodhi was glad to see so much chaos. Most of the floodlights were out, leaving them hidden by near darkness, and the rest of the staff were focused more on the fighters and defenders than they were on the cargo shuttles.

Bodhi almost thought they’d made it when the platform leapt up underneath him. Hit hit the ground and rolled, the explosion so loud he didn’t so much hear it as go temporarily deaf at the sound of it. He laid there for a moment, too stunned to move, so disoriented that it felt as if the whole world had tilted on it’s axis. He managed to struggle to his feet only to have a second explosion throw him to the ground again just after.

The sound of metal screeching against metal rose up, loud enough that he could hear it even over the ringing in his ears, and he realized that he wasn’t just distoriented, the explosions had damaged some of the support pillars enough that the whole platform was tilting. He saw a shuttle snap free of it’s moorings and tumble over the edge.

He could hear a woman screaming, distantly, and when he turned he saw that it was Jyn, only a few feet away but still sounding like she was halfway across the mountain.

He couldn’t see Galen, he could just see her, see her mouth wide open in a scream, and then the platform lurched beneath him again.

He slid across the rain-soaked asphalt, and he could see more equipment go over the edge, along with a few fighters across on the other side of the platform. He could hear the metal straining, now, and even through the haze of his confusion he knew the platform was going to collapse entirely soon. It took him a minute to find Jyn again, just one wet shape among all the rest of the debris strewn out across the platform.

“Jyn?” he called out.

Her officer’s cap was gone, blown away in the storm, and she was huddled over something dark and unmoving, trying to drag it. It took Bodhi a second to realize the thing was Galen.

He ran, skidding to ground beside Galen harder than he’d meant to, panic surging through him. He could smell burnt flesh even over the rain, over the smoke and ion and everything else threatening to completely overwhelm his senses.

“He’s alive!” said Jyn again, still sounding somehow loud and distant at the same time, and Bodhi decided he was going to believe her. He couldn’t handle the alternative. Not when they were so close to freedom, to making it. He hadn’t come this far to leave Galen behind now. “He’s alive, I Just need help moving him.”

He reached down to help drag Galen, desperately hoping he could hold on despite his arm. He thought he heard something like a groan, but it might have been wishful thinking on his part. Together they managed to drag him to a shuttle. It wasn’t the model he usually flew, but fortunately they hadn’t changed his access rights, and the door opened for his code.

There was another violent shudder as the platform was bombed again, and instead of gently resting Galen against the shuttle floor they ended up dropping. Bodhi hestitated, reaching down for him, and Jyn pushed him forward. “Launch!” she yelled, and his hearing was coming back, because she was loud in the confined shuttle. “We need to go!”

He lunged for the controls. He skipped the prep and went straight for the ignition, and cursed as the engine took a few tries to power up. There was another explosion, and he could feel the shuttle sliding sideways, groaning as it slid across the platform. The angle was so steep now it was hard for him to stay in his seat, and from behind him he could hear Jyn shout. Then they were in the air, the shuttle evening out as the artificial gravity kicked in, Eadu vanishing rapidly behind them. 

——

The medkit was woefully inadequate in the face of Galen’s injuries, but Bodhi did his best, carefully layering bacta soaked bandages over the skin where Galen had been struck. There wasn’t even enough to cover the whole wound, but hopefully it was enough to keep him alive until they figured out what they were going to do.

“Sorry,” said Jyn, tossing the empty medkit into the corner of the shuttle. “I should have saved something for you.”

Bodhi was bleeding, blood sheeting down the side of his face from a laceration across his scalp, but that didn’t even compare to how badly the rest of him hurt. His arm was so bad it was starting to crossover from pain to numbness.

“It’s fine,” he said, each word scrapping his throat.

Galen was stretched out on the floor of the shuttle between them, his face pale, his hair plastered to his skin from rainwater and sweat. He looked like death, but if Bodhi concentrated he could see the slight rise and fall of his chest. He was still breathing. He was still alive, even if only barely.

“He needs a hospital,” said Jyn. “Some place with real medical facilities.”  
“Can’t we take him back to Jedha?” asked Bodhi. They couldn’t risk the Imperial-run hospital, but surely the Partisans must have something.

Jyn shook her head. “That was about the extent of our medical supplies,” she said, gesturing towards the empty medkit.

Bodhi sighed. Eadu wasn’t an option and neither was Jedha, and that pretty much covered his knowledge of the galaxy.

“The Cloud-Riders won’t have the facilities we need,” said Jyn. Her face screwed up in concentration. “We’ll have to go to the Alliance.”

She didn’t sound pleased about it. “Do you have their coordinates?”

She hesitated, like she was having second thoughts. “They might not be the best people to reach out to at the moment. I don’t- I don’t know them. I don’t know if they’ll help.”

“I don’t have any better ideas,” said Bodhi.

“I just wish we had more time,” said Jyn, looking down at Galen. They both knew he didn’t have time. Any second could be his last. “Head for the Yavin system. Hopefully they haven’t moved.”

——

Their reception at Yavin wasn’t the warmest he’d ever experienced, but they were still gentler than the Partisans, so he didn’t complain. A med droid patched him up while he watched Jyn arguing with a stern looking man in uniform. He asked about Galen ever couple of minutes, and he always got the same response. _We’re doing our best._

“Keep an eye on him, please,” asked Jyn, and then she was gone.

They wanted her to speak to the council. They wanted Galen, really, but nobody was certain he was going to live through the night, so they settled for Jyn. For the most part it felt as if they’d overlooked Bodhi entirely, and he preferred it that way. He was too tired to talk. If he knew for certain Galen was going to pull through he’d have fallen asleep already. His nerves were shot, his shoulder stung viciously despite the painkillers he’d been given, and more than anything he wanted for the whole thing to be over.

After an hour of staring at the wall, stuck in some strange, over-medicated place between sleep and wakefulness, a droid came up to him and beeped at him to follow. He found Galen in a bed, pale and nearly covered in bandages. Ideally he’d be submerged in a top-of-the-line batca tank, but tanks were hard to find when you were on the run from the Empire.

The Alliance had done their best with what they’d had, probably. “Thank you,” he said, and the little assistant med droid rolled off to another section of the makeshift hospital.

He leaned in over Galen, pushing the hair back from his forehead. He was still too pale, all color drained from his face, from his lips, and there was tubing in place to help him breath, but at least he was breathing. Bodhi kissed him on the forehead, gently, almost afraid that any stronger touch would sent him over the edge, and at least his skin was warm and dry. He’d been so cold in the shuttle.

He pulled over a chair and slumped into, picking at the edge of his bandages as he watched Galen sleep. WIth all the adrenaline in the system he thought he wouldn’t be able to sleep, but he drifted off until he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“You slept through all the excitement,” said Jyn.

She looked exhausted. There were dark circles under her eyes, a bruise blossoming across her cheek, and her scrapes from the platform explosion were still untreated, angry and red and just starting to scab over. There was only one chair in Galen’s little corner of the field clinic, so she slid down the wall until she was sitting cross-legged on the ground. “It’s over,” she said, looking up at Galen’s bed. “The Death Star’s gone.”

Bodhi looked at Galen, too, unmoving and unchanged since he’d fallen asleep.

“It doesn’t feel over,” he said.

“No,” said Jyn, “It doesn’t, does it?”

——

Mon Mothma handed him a medal and Bodhi thanked her as politely as he could manage given that nothing felt real. Less than a week ago he was an Imperial cargo pilot, and he had been very sure that he’d continue on as an Imperial cargo pilot until he either slipped up in the cockpit or died of old age. Now he was a hero of the Rebellion, with a very solid medal to prove it.

He didn’t care that much about the medal, but he did deeply appreciate that they moved Galen to one of the flagships. The ship had better medical facilities, as the days went by Galen got a new lung and a new shoulder joint along with more bacta than Bodhi had ever seen anybody get in his life.

Galen looked better, but he still didn’t wake up.

Bodhi’s own arm healed up fine. So did the scrapes along his wrists, and his ribcage, and all the other places he’d torn up. His injuries were never quite as serious as Galen’s. They still hurt, though. He still wanted Galen to wake up and hold him and tell him it would be fine. Bodhi hadn’t done much over the past few weeks other than wait for Galen to wake up, and he was starting to wonder if he needed to consider what he might do if Galen never did.

“He’s going to wake up,” said Jyn, every time he saw her. She was busy. She was a trained fighter, and the Alliance had a lot of use for a fighter. They had less need of a cargo pilot, and Bodhi was fine with that for the time being. “You’ll watch him for me, right?”

She didn’t seem to like the idea of Galen being left alone. Bodhi understood; he felt the same way. “Of course,” he said. “As long as it takes.”

——

Bodhi was asleep when Galen woke up, which seemed deeply unfair after so many weeks of vigilance.

He felt a hand against his face, and he woke up to see Galen’s eyes half open, his breathing coming in labored gasps through the respirator. He looked alarmed, people always did with the respirators, and Bodhi was fully awake in an instant. He reached for Galen’s shoulders, pushing him gently back down against the bed.

“It’s fine,” he said, trying to sound soothing and calm even though he was going out of his mind. Galen was awake, and after so long waiting for it he was hard-pressed to believe it was really happening. “It’s fine. We’re on an Alliance ship. You’re going to be fine.”

Galen tugged at the respirator, his eyes closing as Bodhi helped him pull it free.

“Bodhi,” he said, his voice rasping. His eyes looked a little unfocused, but he was still clearly looking in Bodhi’s direction.

“Yes,” said Bodhi, reaching down and kissing his forhead. He’d missed hearing him so much. The relief was overwhelming, and he had to swallow down the urge to cry. “I’m here.”

He looked around the room, blinking even though the lights in the medical bay were kept low, and then he looked back at Bodhi. “I thought-“ he said, and he couldn’t speak. Bodhi helped him drink something, and still it took him few tries to get his voice straight. “I thought I saw Jyn.”

“You did,” he said, trying not to let worry slip into his voice. If he didn’t remember much of what had happened on Eadu that might be for the best. Galen closed his eyes, his throat moving as he swallowed. “She’s planet-side, but she’ll be back soon,” said Bodhi, his fingers entwined with Galen’s. “I’ll call her.”

He reached out for the comm with his free hand. It would have been easier if he’d let go of Galen, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to let go for even a second.

——

The first few days Galen veered between understanding and incoherence, but it evened out. He remembered where he was, he remembered why he was there, he remembered that his daughter was real not just a fevered hallucination. He still woke up in a cold panic, sometimes, but that was to be expected. He’d spent decades under the Death Star’s shadow. It was going to take him a while before he really accepted it was gone.

He could walk, too, even though still had to lean pretty heavily on Bodhi when he did.

“I’m sorry,” he said, running his thumb along the scars still curled around Bodhi’s wrists. He’d bandaged up the welts left by repeated sets of cuffs, but then he’d put off doing anything about the marks they’d left behind. He’d had bigger concerns. He’d get them fixed soon, though, because he knew it upset Galen to see them. “I know-“

Bodhi cut him off with a kiss. He’d apologized so many times already, and Bodhi didn’t like to hear it anymore. He’d never wanted Galen to apologize for any of it. All he’d wanted was for Galen to survive, and he’d already gotten that. “It’s fine,” said Bodhi. “It’s over.”

Galen was silent for a moment. The Empire was still marching onwards, so maybe celebration was premature, but Bodhi couldn’t wait forever. “I know,” said Galen. And then, a moment later, “I didn’t expect to survive it.”

“Galen,” said Bodhi.

He already knew Galen hadn’t expected to outlive the Death Star, but he still didn’t like to think about it. That last night before he left for Jedha had come so close to being their last. It might have been their last, if Jyn hadn’t turned him around.

“I’m only here because of you,” said Galen, his hand sliding through Bodhi’s hair. Bodhi sighed and curved into the touch, until he was leaning on Galen instead of the other way around. He was getting stronger ever day, more like his old self. Better than his old self, really. More at ease. Maybe more like the man he’d been before Eadu, before the Empire.

“I’d do it again if I had too,” said Bodhi. He could still feel his injuries at night, could still see the horror of it sometimes in his dreams, but he would still do it all again anyway. As many times as it took.

He’d never thought of himself as that kind of person, as a brave person, but he’d changed.

“I did it for you,” he said, “but it was the right thing to do. I can see that now.”

He was happy, and only in feeling it now did he realize that he’d never really been happy before. Not as an adult, not in the Empire. Even with Galen, when he’d come the closest, he’d never been free of that omnipresent fear, that sense of misery just around the corner.

They were free now, though. And for the first time in a while Bodhi was looking foward to what the future would bring.


End file.
